DO YOU FEEL THAT THE MISSILE CRISIS EXPERIENCE CHANGED PRESIDENT KENNEDY?

Yes, I'm sure it did. I think the President was always conscious of the stakes of war, of what it meant to use force. But having an intense experience in which you were thinking about nuclear war is somehow a real possibility must have changed him. But I would repeat that in my experience of working in the White House the President never thought about force or its use without thinking cautiously. Some of his later day critics have said, timidly but, I, my own would be cautiously.

HOW DO YOU THINK, YOU SAY YOU THINK THAT IT DID CHANGE HIM, HOW DO YOU THINK IT CHANGED HIM?

Well I think the Cuban Missile Crisis changed the President by deepening his realization and perhaps, his emotional perception if that's a word, an appropriate word of what it means to look over the brink to contemplate that these awful weapons might really be fired.

DO THINK IT HELPED THE PROCESS TOWARDS THE TREATY?

Yes, I think it did. I again uh--uh the President was genuinely interested in arms control and genuinely concerned about ah—a test ban treaty much before the Cuban Missile Crisis. Uh--Although he was genuinely interested in Arms Control I think he was perhaps initially skeptical about whether he could get it. And the events of October '62 possibly helped in making him both more desirous of making the first step and more determined let's say about the risks involved. And of course, he overestimated the political risks.

DO YOU THINK IT FRIGHTENED HIM, THE MISSILE CRISIS, PERSONALLY?

I have no way of answering that question. Uh, Mr. Kennedy was a very controlled person. And in such occasions when I saw him during this couple of weeks, which were a few, but not many I didn't see in his demeanor anything much different than I saw in his demeanor anything much different than I saw in his demeanor afte--otherwise...

DID YOU GET A SENSE AFTER THE CRISIS THAT LOOK—UH, CARL, AND UH, THE PEOPLE, YOU KNOW—YOUR GROUP, WE'VE REALLY GOT TO GET AN AGREEMENT HERE, WE'VE REALLY GOT TO.

No I don't think that. The Crisis was over in a short sense at the end of the two weeks of course the discussions in the UN dragged on quite awhile and really never came to a sharp resolution, but the sense of crisis was over at the end of the two weeks. The negotiations that had been going on off and on in Geneva for many years resumed in New York the end of December, I believe, I'm not certain of this, before the Christmas interval, and then early in January of '63. So those were tripartite negotiations in which the UK as well as the US were dealing with the USSR. Kennedy was certainly interested in negotiations, eager to see them go forward and disappointed when they seem to come to nothing. But...

DID YOU HEAR THAT FROM MCCLOY, THAT STORY FROM ...THIS IS—YOU'RE NEVER GOING TO BE ABLE TO DO YOUR?

I did not hear directly from McCloy it was ...

BUT IT BECAME PART OF...

Yes, it became part of the accepted wisdom.

OKAY TELL US THAT STORY AND PERHAPS WHAT THAT MEANT IN TERMS OF YOUR—YOU KNOW WHAT WAS HAPPENING AT THAT TIME?

Well there's been a lot of talk about Kuznetsov saying to McCloy during the course of the discussions in New York at the UN about removing the attack planes and the rest of the issues that were unresolved to pick up that sentence Kuznetsov is supposed to have said to McCloy,"You will never do this to us again." I certainly didn't hear McCloy say that directly and I heard it second, third or fourth hand. I can't remember. Nor do I think that People said, "Okay what does that mean and what do we now." And further I'd say, perhaps there's more retrospective significance to that than there was currency maybe... This goes into the whole business of what was the role of the nuclear balance in Cuba there's a contentious subject, people have sharply different views on it. As people have been watching this program know, already at the time of the Missile Crisis we had an overwhelming advantage in the number of warheads on missiles as well as a overwhelming advantage, if you added the bombers in on both sides, not as great. Nobody at the time thought that advantage would be permanent. We expected that there would be a Russian build-up. I now, looking back, retrospectively, and not commenting what I may or may not have thought which I don't remember in October 1962 but certainly the—the rate and steadiness of the Russian build-up was a bit surprising as I look at it now. But, certainly nobody would have said to the Kuznetsov remark at that time "My gosh, this means they're going to build-up their strategic forces. "We knew they were going to build-up their strategic forces, we expected it. So in that sense, I'm saying perhaps more retrospective significance than current significance.

WHAT WAS THE FIRST INDICATION THAT THE SOVIETS WERE REALLY INTERESTED IN A TREATY?

Uh...

POST MISSILE CRISIS?

Yeah. Well, the first indication was a ... If we think back to the question, when did the Soviet show that they were interested in a treaty? Well, that's a question with a sort of complicated set of answers. The negotiations in New York at the UN which I mentioned earlier indicated an interest. Again, we know retrospectively especially as reported by Norman Cousins, telling about a conversation he had with Khrushchev, that the Soviets felt they'd been given a definite message that message had been the basis of their negotiating position in New York at the turn of the year. And when there still was a failure to agree Khrushchev resented it. The question of who gave what message is as these things always are, not simple, but George Kistiakowsky who was a member of the President's Science Advisory Committee and had been Eisenhower's Science Advisor and had been very much interested in these issues and instrumental in getting the first round of talks on a test ban treaty in Geneva started, continued met one or another Russian scientist, I'm afraid I don't remember whom, at some kind of informal private group, perhaps, the Pugwash in Geneva, and talked to him about how many inspections the United States would need. Wiesner who was then the President's Science Advisor also had a similar encounter. The second-hand stories, and for me they are second-hand stories say that Wiesner and Kistiakowsky, from the Soviet point of view, gave the message that we would accept three inspections. Foster's written instructions and Bill Foster who was the head of the arms control and disarmament agency at the time, was the American negotiator in New York. Foster's formal instructions, I should say, talked about seven inspections. And he didn't budge from his instructions and that gap wasn't closed. There's more to be said about this and maybe we'll come back to it. The next important signal that I remember was a speech that Khrushchev made in East Berlin. That was the speech indicating a continuing interest and asking us to send that allegation to Moscow. We responded to that speech in a hurry. And said we would send a delegation. The Khrushchev speech was in turn a response to an earlier, but not much earlier, just about a week earlier speech, by the President. That was a speech that Mr. Kennedy made at commencement at American University and if I remember it was either the end of May or the beginning of June. And in that speech which was devoted to largely, to the theme of peace and the dangers of the arms race and the necessity of co-existence and the desirability of peaceful coexistence between the US and the USSR Reference was made to the desirability of the treaty. So that's the sequence of events I remember.

WE'RE GOING TO INTERVIEW WIESNER AND COUSINS, SO I DON'T NEED YOU TO DEAL WITH THAT... WHAT I'D LIKE YOU TO DEAL WITH MORE IS YOUR OWN PERSONAL INVOLVEMENT IN THESE THINGS. DID THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY SPEECH COME OUT OF A SPECIFIC INDICATION FROM THE SOVIET'S THAT THEY WOULD ACCEPT AN AMERICAN UNIVERSITY TYPE SPEECH OR THAT THEY WERE READY FOR AN AMERICAN UNIVERSITY TYPE SPEECH?

Not to my knowledge. Oh the question is why did the President make that speech at that time. Were we responding to some specific signal or not. To my knowledge we weren't responding to a specific signal. I say to my knowledge because there were so many channels of conversation and information that I would not say that I was always aware of everything. I tended to be aware of almost everything if something were important I think I would know it. I do not think there was a formal communication. What I'm saying, just being cautious is that if Bobby Kennedy had a conversation with Dobrynin and Dobrynin said something which Bobby interpreted as an interesting sign and you remarked on it to the President, I might not hear about it. In fact it's not clear who would or under what circumstance...

WERE YOU IN ON THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY SPEECH, I UNDERSTAND THAT WAS A SMALL KIND OF GROUP OF PEOPLE THAT MCNAMARA DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT IT, THAT RUSS DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT IT.

Well the, so the American University speech as I perceived it and I was involved in some of the drafting, arose from an initiative by Ted Sorenson and that was typical to reconstruct a process in a somewhat imaginative way. That is I don't know that what I'm about to say is exactly what happened but it's the kind of thing that happened. The president of course, always has more invitations to speak than he can possibly accept, he is always welcome to speak at any commencement, any place and the slightest signal that he would accept an invitation, of course is welcomed and so on. And that's in the nature of the office and as it should be. I don't remember whether the occasion of American University had already been picked as an occasion when the President was going to make a speech or not. What I do remember is that Sorenson sent a note around which is what he typically did and that note would go to whomever uh—uh would be likely people. If the speech was going to be on foreign policy, it went to the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense and to Bundy, whoso deputy I was, and so on. If the President had been thinking of making a speech on economic policy then that would have gone to Walter Heller and the Secretary of the Treasury and all that. All these people were asked to contribute things and I wrote two pages of notes outline, not by any means a full outline, but things and I talked about the theme of peace and the dangers of war and the need for emphasizing it. In my own mind this was the speech which would be peaceful-sounding as opposed to let's say that part of the inaugural address which was tough "-sounding. Sorenson collected these notes. He worked on a speech draft which was a solitary process for Sorenson. He didn't distribute the notes around to everybody and allow everybody to comment on everybody suggestion, he never did. Are you going to interview Ted on this.

YEAH.

My involvement arose from the fact that the President, when the decision was made to give it at American University, was going to be away for the three or four days preceding. He went to Hawaii and to Los Angeles and therefore, I was both keeping up with the news keeping them up with the news and talking with Ted about speech drafts from the airplane. Indeed I remember with some you know clarity, because it was very exciting being in the business of sitting at the telephone, talking to Ted on the airplane, who was working on the final speech draft as the President was flying east from Los Angeles. And it was over ...I guess, what I said before was not quite right, because we got some information of a Khrushchev speech before that speech was given. And it was the Khrushchev speech in Berlin that led to putting into the speech a particular invitation on that point. And so we heard something from Khrushchev, that is, we had the reports of this speech, those reports uh—uh I relayed to Sorenson wherever he was, and then he worked some-

TELL ME THEN IN AN ABBREVIATED FORM, YOU WERE IN WASHINGTON, SORENSON WAS ON THE PLANE, AND WHAT YOUR INVOLVEMENT WAS?

The American University Speech was an occasion that the President took to talk about peace and to talk about our relation to the Soviet Union in some kind of larger framework and to relate to the question of nuclear weapons. Sorenson had collected ideas for the speech. The President had gone on a trip first to Honolulu and then to Los Angeles, this was a political fall you know, looking forward to elections and all that, namely. During the period that the of that trip, Khrushchev made a speech in East Berlin. And that speech contained an indication of interest in the treaty of asking that's, that we resume the discussion, which had been broken. I passed that information along to Sorenson. Sorenson was working on the speech on the airplane flying from Los Angeles to Washington. And we were talking on the phone. He was checking language was the language he was writing, did if accurately reflect what I'd heard on the cables and so on. And that was a rather exciting experience to think of so to speak, the speech being written in the air. I think it's also the case that really this was a fairly early use of the very elaborate communication system that existed that enabled that to take place.

DID YOU HAVE A SENSE WHEN YOU WERE ON THE PHONE TO SORENSON AND ALL THIS WAS HAPPENING AND THEY WERE FLYING INTO CHICAGO, DID YOU HAVE A SENSE THAT THIS WAS HISTORY, THAT THIS WAS AN IMPORTANT EVENT IN HISTORY, THAT...

Certainly the business of participating in, and writing that speech was exciting and the sort of physical circumstances of being on a signal corp? line and talking to the plane and so on add to the excitement. I don't, it's hard to say whether one has a sense of history. One that is—is a historical moment. When you work in the White House in some sense you're always under pressure, you always think it's a historical moment. But in some sense, you, it's everyday life and this is just another part of everyday life which is intent. If I can tell an irrelevant story. Very early on in my participation at a in Washington I was meeting, it was about foreign aid Ted Sorenson, Dave Bell, who was then the Budget Director, several other people were there. We all quite young I was 40 at the time. And Ted looked around at the table and the cabinet room and said "It's hard to believe this is really the government of the United States." And one certainly had that feeling from time to time. But the Presidency carries an awe with it whoever is the holder of the office I think Kennedy had a talent for reinforcing that although he was not a man full of pretension. And that always had its weight.

WAS THE INVITATION TO GO TO MOSCOW, POST AMERICAN UNIVERSITY AS FAR AS YOU...

Yes, the invitation to go to Moscow was post-American University and that also happened over a weekend. So I in one of my regular jobs being a switch board operator was involved. The oh, President was in Palm Beach, Sorenson was with the President. We got the invitation. And the question immediately arose, who would be asked to head the delegation?

START AGAIN.

The President was in Palm Beach over a weekend when a cable came from oh, the Soviets inviting us to name a delegation to go to Moscow, have a, have a treaty discussion. I was in my usual capacity of being a switch board operator somebody was always in the White House of the senior NSC staff. My reaction to the invitation was to think about the politics of it and think about what kind of negotiator would—we would get. My first response—uh action was to call Sorenson and talk to Sorenson, tell him the message, ask whether the President had thought about whom he wanted as negotiator and things like that. Sorenson said, yes he wanted to get McCloy. And I said then, in that case, maybe I should pass that word onto the Secretary of State and Sorenson said, yes. And I called over and left word for Ross... of course he would get the cable as well. It was sent to the State Department Message Center and the White House, and say that I understood from Sorenson that the President was going to ask Mr. McCloy to head the delegation. McCloy refused. And second hand I was told by Ted, that McCloy said, he didn't think it was likely that the effort would succeed and he didn't really want to do it. And Ted's own comment was that McCloy felt that he wanted to do something that'd be successful and he was more interested in and more optimistic about the possibility of some kind of Middle East negotiation. But that's second hand point. As soon as I heard that I called Ted again and said, is when McCloys refusal is known to the State Department the Secretary will suggest that George Ball head the delegation. George Ball was the Under-Secretary of State at the time. George really doesn't want a treaty. Let's ask Harriman to do it. And Sorenson said, "That's a great idea." And the President called up Harriman and asked Harriman.

CAN I ASK YOU TO TELL THAT STORY AGAIN AND SHORTEN THE McCLOY PART...

The invitation...The the President was spending a week end in Palm Beach when we got an invitation of the Soviets, to name a delegation to go to Moscow and— and discuss, negotiate about a test ban treaty. I relayed the message as was my job, as the sort of duty officer down to Palm Beach and I talked to Sorenson, specifically. Sorenson indicated the President wanted to get McCloy to head the delegation. McCloy refused, he was not sure of something he wanted to do. When I heard about the refusal, I communicated again with Ted and offered the guess that the Secretary would suggest Ball. George Ball, the Under-Secretary of State, and I was skeptical about Ball's eagerness to get this done and therefore, whether he was a good negotiator. And Ted and I talked and I suggested that we try Harriman. The result of that was the President indeed did ask Harriman and Harriman was glad to go and that's how he got the job. Harriman decided something that was important, that we should have very small delegation, and we'd had a very small delegation. We had Bill Tyler from the State Department, who was the Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs. We had John McNaughten from the Defense Department who was the General Counsel of the Defense Department, and close to McNamara and interested in these matters. Frank Long from the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, who was the scientific adviser of the delegation. And Adrian Fischer, the deputy director of the Arms Control Disarmament Agency, who by the way was a very well known and very imminent international lawyer and a professional on treaties and treaty language and things of that sort. And I went as the Executive Secretary—Executive Officer Harriman's bag carrier. And that was it.

AND WHAT WAS THE MOOD WHEN YOU LEFT WASHINGTON, WAS IT—WERE YOU OFF ON A GREAT MISSION OF PEACE, I MEAN OR WAS IT UH, WERE YOU SENT OFF BY THE PRESIDENT WITH FLYING COLORS, CAN YOU TELL US A BIT ABOUT THAT?

Yes, I can tell you a little about that. Harriman wanted to go up to New York and do some personal business in New York, so he did, We, the rest of the crowd, had a an air force 1, there are several, of them, the presidential plane and we stopped in Kennedy and picked up the Governor and went to Moscow. Before that there had been several discussions which the President and Bundy and Harriman and I met. There were some bigger meetings as well. But the discussions really said to Harriman, I want a treaty, get a treaty. Now, when we went, we thought we were going to discuss a complete test ban treaty. And the President said to Harriman, "You know, be in touch, and I want a treaty and..."I'm not trying to quote language, I don't remember language, but give a spirit of it. And the spirit of it is let's not get into haggling about numbers. An incident which is interesting and revealing of the personalities involved in the irrelevant to the treaty, occurred in New York. That—the day before, the day Harriman had left Washington, the Secretary testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the Civil Rights bill, the administration of Civil Rights. And he did a magnificent job. Senator Eastland was chairman of the Judiciary Committee a fellow southerner, and he talked in a—a typical way to Rusk about the violent means which some protesters had used and Rusk said the—uh, Mr. Chairman, "if I were born black and lived in Georgia, I think I would use violent means too," which was an uncharacteristic thing for Rusk to say, but a very forceful...thing for Rusk to say. All this was reported in the Times. I was waiting for Harriman in the VIP Lounge at Kennedy people were sitting in the plane. He came in waving the Times and "Did you see this, did you see this! And isn't it wonderful, I ought to call up Dean and tell him how well he did." And I sat there and because Harriman is hard of hearing, he tends to shout on the phone and I heard the whole conversation really, just I wasn't listening on another phone but, and it was a fascination conversation, because Harriman was genuinely warm and Rusk was suspicious. He was saying to himself, "Why is he calling me—what's this about?" But we went off in a very good mood. We did want to get a treaty. The President wanted a treaty and we thought Khrushchev wanted a treaty. As the papers featured at the time, Harriman was interviewed when he landed in Moscow. He was asked how long he'd thought he'd be there and he said, "I'll be here two weeks and I'll get a treaty." And he called it pretty closely. However, all the wasn't euphoria we had an indication on the very first day of what proved to be the case, namely that Khrushchev was not interested in the—in the comprehensive treaty. We had brought along in addition to Frank Long who was a member of the delegation and a government official, Frank Press. Frank was then Professor of Geo-Physics at Cal Tech, I believe, he hadn't at the time come to MIT. He was a very brilliant young geo-physicists seismologist and had just finished a lot of very important work about test detection and identification which had changed our ideas and made it clear that we could do better than we previously thought. Uh, geo-physics is an international kind of science. There's a lot of interchange of materials and so on. Frank had many contacts amongst the Russian geo-physical community. And after we had our day's sleep or what not, Frank started to call up everybody he knew and nobody would was there. Every geo-physicist was out of town or unavailable. And Frank told this to Governor Harriman, and said we're not going to have a comprehensive treaty and in fact I think I ought to go home and in two days he did.

WAS THAT SAD FOR YOU?

Well, we were disappointed, yes. But it was perfectly clear from Khrushchev's opening statement that was so.

HOW DID YOU GET THE SENSE WHEN YOU LEFT, HOW IMPORTANT WAS THIS TO KENNEDY, NOT ONLY POLITICALLY BUT PERSONALLY?

Well when Harriman and I—when the whole mission returned, the plane dropped us uh—at Otis and we got in a Helicopter and went to Hyannis, it was a weekend and the President was in Hyannisport. The rest of the party proceeded home to Washington. Kennedy received us he was very pleased. He wanted Harriman to go up on--get up on the television news and had arranged for--for the reporters to be there. He fussed a lot. He said, "Averell, you've got a dirty shirt on. You can't go on television on that--in that shirt, what size shirt do you wear..." And when Harriman, who always looked elegant and never paid a bit of attention to how he looked told him. Kennedy went upstairs and got him shirt and he changed his shirt. And so he was very pleased. I mean the whole atmosphere was very pleased. We had a few minutes conversation and I had already said that I'd come the end of my leave at Harvard and I was going back to teach. And the President was always very gracious to everybody, to me, but to everybody with whom he worked. And he said, you know we had a few minutes conversation while Harriman was getting cleaned up. And he said, "Are you really going back to teach those kids, is that what you want to do, don't you want to stay here, isn't it more exciting?" And I said, "Well you know, I don't really want to be a government servant in a professional way, I'm academic, that's what we want to do." And he kind of shook his head and said, "Well if that's what you want to do " And in presenting Harriman to the press and stuff it was clear he felt this was an achievement. And then that feeling was reinforced during the next month or so when he went on speaking tours. He'd been rather anxious about the ratification question and this after all was a really novel event. Leaving aside its technical content, it was the first formal treaty we had negotiated with the Soviet Union since 1934 when we recognized them and negotiated the usual diplomatic consular arrangements and I'm not sure that—that wasn't a treaty did not require sending confirmation U that was an executive act. So this would be the first treaty we had ever negotiated with the Soviet Union. And I think it's difficult in 1986, to remember what it meant to be friendly to the Soviets in 1963. I'm reminded of the fact that when Gagarin the first man to got into orbit was in Washington, the President wanted to see him. He admired bravery, he admired this kind of courage and he just wanted to see a man who'd done a wonderful thing. He also did not want to meet him formally and he said to me, "I don't want to have -- I don't want a picture of me shaking hands with a communist." Gagarin was brought in, so to speak unannounced and not on the schedule and Kennedy met him and they exchanged compliments and so on. And that was his sense of the politics of this thing. So that was a big step. Irrespective of the substantive content of the treaty. What he learned as he went on his speaking tour mostly out west talking about dams and things like that, when he worked in references to the treaty, or to Harriman or to what not, he got a positive response and he did more of it and got more of a positive response and gradually became rather cheerful about the prospect of the ratification.

WAS THIS THE DAY OF THE SIGNING OR THE DAY OF THE—

This was the day of the initialing. The signing, Mr. Rusk signed the treaty. This was the day of the initialing. Yes. I have here in my hand. And there Averell Harriman smiling at Khrushchev; between Khrushchev and Harriman you see the face of K, who was our ambassador to the Soviet Union. Behind Khrushchev is Alex Akalovsky, who was our interpreter and a very swell fellow. And you can see one eye and one ear of— and the nice clean white shirt of Carl Kaysen behind Alex Akalovsky, and that was really a kind of a delightful moment.

HOW DID THAT MAKE YOU FEEL?

It made me feel good. And I have to say when I left Hyannisport, I went to Cambridge not back to Washington. My family had left Washington already and you know, I called up from Hyannisport and said you know Dear, I'm home, and so on. And I went back to Cambridge, this was the end of July, beginning of August, I forget... and my kids, who were what was Laura? I guess she was seven or six and her sister was 13 or 14. And two of the neighbor kids who were about the same age, had this thing, and they'd made banners, and they were marching up and down in front of the house as a sort of a four—three-girl, one-boy reception committee, these little kids, and cheering. So that was great! And I felt great. I thought it was terrific.

IT'S NOT OFTEN YOU GET ON THE COVER OF LIFE MAGAZINE.

That's right. It's, it's my only shot. And given the end of LIFE, it's not likely to happen again.

SHOW US THE PICTURE AGAIN, FOR THE CAMERA, AND WHAT IS HAPPENING THERE? I MEAN, IS THAT SOMETHING STAGED—

It's, it's, it's staged. It's staged. This is taking place in the guest house, in the foreign ministry. This picture is somewhat staged. It's taking place in the guest house of the foreign ministry, which is a kind of elaborately furnished villa, that was the site of the negotiation. And we're not in the room, I don't think, at which we had the negotiation; we're downstairs in a, in another room. And this is a photo opportunity.

KHRUSHCHEV LOOKS VERY HAPPY THERE. WHAT WAS HIS MOOD?

Khrushchev's mood was certainly very buoyant, he was -- Khrushchev's mood at the time was certainly very buoyant. As the picture in Life showed, he was smiling. Later that day, I was fortunate enough to be able to go to dinner at the Kremlin. Khrushchev gave a dinner for the, nominally for the heads of delegations and the ambassadors. That is, Harriman and Kohler for us, and Quintin Hogg (later Lord Hailsham) and Humphrey Trevelyan. Just to add a little unceremonial element to it Khrushchev and Dobrynin were earlier standing side by side with me in the urinal outside Khrushchev's office, and Khrushchev said to Dobrynin, "Do you think" I don't mean Khrushchev, Harriman...

START AGAIN.

Yeah. That was Harriman, not Khrushchev. Uh... Later that day I went to a dinner at the Kremlin nominally only the ambassador and the head of the delegation were invited. I got in a way that was kind of amusing and perhaps a little less than the most formal route. Khrushchev, Kohler and I Harriman, Kohler and I had gone to a meeting with Khrushchev in the afternoon in his office in the Kremlin. After the meeting, Harriman and Dobrynin and I were in the bathroom, lavatory next to the office, and we were standing there and urinating in the urinal. And Harriman said to Dobrynin, "Do you think you could get my young friend invited?" And Dobrynin indeed arranged it. Now, during that evening in the Kremlin, which was really a once in a lifetime event for me, and probably will remain that way it was one of the most interesting occasions I've ever experienced. We were in a very splendid room called the Empress Katherine Hall, the walls were covered with some kind of green silk, and there were malachite columns. The scene was really very splendid. The food and drink were ample and very good, and Russian food isn't often good. And Khrushchev was in an enormously up, hyperactive mood. He talked an awful lot, very few people said anything else. And he just jumped around and danced around and offered toasts and clapped people on the back. And he was especially attentive to Harriman. And we went to the dinner immediately after this meeting. Uh, the Kremlin is a walled compound that's divided in two. In Stalin's day, the whole of it was sealed off. Khrushchev changed that, and the outer part of it is now public park. This party went from Khrushchev's office in the inner part, through that gate and then across what was a public park. And there were crowds of people. And Khrushchev was walking through the crowd — reminded me a little of President Johnson — chucking babies under the chin, shaking hands, and saying to people in Russian, and it was Akalovsky of course who told us or me particularly what he was saying, since Kohler speaks Russian, understands it — and what Khrushchev was saying is "Comrades, here is Gospadine Garriman" — there is no H in Russian, so you say,"Garriman." Gospadine means friend rather than comrade, and he called him Gospadine Garriman. "I'm going to give him a dinner, because we have signed a negotiated test ban treaty. Don't you think he has earned a dinner?" And people cheered and so on. So it was that kind of a jolly scene. And that mood of excitement and euphoria certainly lasted through the whole dinner. The Soviet style of doing this, and perhaps the old Russian style as well, I don't know, is you had drinks, and then you sit down at dinner and you eat and drink quite a bit, and then you move to another room and sit in small groups, at small tables for coffee and desert. And I sat at a table with Kusnyetov and Gromyko. Brezhnev was in the group, but Brezhnev, at least as far as I could observe, didn't say a single word all evening. And indeed, I think Khrushchev spoke more than every, twice as much as everybody else put together, except the interpreters.

HE WAS REALLY... THIS FOR HIM WAS A MOMENT?

This was a moment of achievement. And my own interpretation of that, for what it's worth, is that one of the continuing elements in the Soviet perspective on Soviet relations to the United States is the sense that they're not recognized as equals. And for Khrushchev, this was recognition as an equal. And, in a sense it was Khrushchev's achievement, to have the Soviet Union recognized as an equal. A-and obviously I don't have any access to what goes on in and what went on in Khrushchev's mind. But I can't help believing that he must have felt to himself, Stalin didn't accomplish this, and I have. Uh...

DID YOU GET ANY SENSE THAT THIS WAS NEARING THE END OF HIS...?

Khrushchev seemed very happy. We had absolutely no sense at all that he was at anything but the peak of his powers, certainly his behavior in relation to his colleagues, the way he dominated the scene at that dinner the way he received us when we first came and had the first formal meeting with Khrushchev, and it was the mark of the respect which he gave to Harriman, which was high, and of the importance of the occasion that he received us. I mean, it could have been Gromyko and so on. And he made a long, immensely tedious speech about agriculture. That was what was on his mind. And he just spilled it out. Uh, we had no sense that— and there's no way; that's a very tightly buttoned-up world, and there was no way we'd see what was going on. To take another area as I mentioned, Harriman had a meeting with Khrushchev that— the afternoon before the final dinner. That was the meeting to talk about Southeast Asia, not about other business. It was a very one-sided conversation in that Harriman presented certain complaints and requests and so on. And Khrushchev's total response was to say, "I don't run a post office for you. I don't deliver messages for China, I don't deliver messages for Vietnam. If you want to talk to the Chinese, talk to them yourself. If you want to talk to North Vietnam" he of course called it the Democratic Republic of Vietnam "talk to them yourself." Nothing in that rather sharp and unpleasant interchange, not very long, gave iny an— any indication to us of the strains between the Soviet Union and China. And we were really quite unaware of them, at that time.

MANY PEOPLE HAVE SPECULATED SINCE, OR HISTORIANS HAVE TALKED ABOUT KHRUSHCHEV'S NEEDING THIS ARMS CONTROL AGREEMENT BECAUSE HE WAS MOST CONCERNED ABOUT CHINA.

We do know, as we look back on it that Khrushchev was concerned about China. We do know that the ... arms control agreement was something he wanted in relation to China. We do know that the Chinese condemned the agreement very sharply. And it may be that the Chinese condemnation and the depth of the split contributed to Khrushchev's (ouster?). Let me be careful about what I'm saying. Uh, there's no evidence that a different First Secretary than Khrushchev would have done any differently at the time. And the Soviet decision to cut off the help that the Soviet Union was giving to China on nuclear matters and nuclear weapons matters wasn't just what later came to be called one of Khrushchev's hair brained schemes. I think that reflected a much broader view, and Brezhnev didn't change the relations with China in any significant way.

WERE YOU THERE FOR THE SIGNING OR JUST FOR THE

No, I was not there for the signing. I had returned to real life, and was teaching in Cambridge.

AND IN THOSE DAYS IT WASN'T SOMETHING THAT WAS TELECAST REALLY, AND THE PICTURES WE SEE AND THE NEWS FOOTAGE WE'VE SEEN ARE SOMETHING YOU WOULD HAVE SEEN A FEW DAYS LATER—

Yes. Yes. Yes.

DO YOU REMEMBER WATCHING THAT FOOTAGE ON TV, THE LITTLE TOAST WHERE KHRUSHCHEV PICKS UP A CHAMPAGNE GLASS OR SOMETHING AND TOASTS HARRIMAN, AND GROMYKO AND HARRIMAN SHAKE HANDS, WE'RE GOING TO USE A BIT OF THIS FOOTAGE IN THE FILM, AND I'M WONDERING IF YOU REMEMBER WATCHING IT?

I don't remember watching it. And... it may be I would have to ask my wife, but I don't believe we had a TV set at the time. I shouldn't admit that.

THE KEY MOMENT FOR YOU WAS THE INITIALING?

The key moment was the initialing, and the it was clear that the ratification wouldn't be a problem by the time it came up, although we had earlier been worried.

IT'S SAD NOW TO THINK, I MEAN, WHAT WAS, UH, FOUR MONTHS LATER KENNEDY WAS DEAD.

Yes. Yes, well, it's—

AND NOT MUCH LONGER THAN A YEAR LATER KHRUSHCHEV WAS GONE. CAN YOU SORT OF TALK ABOUT THE AFTERMATH OF THIS IN TERMS OF THE TWO LEADERS IN A BRIEF... FOR BOTH OF THEM, I THINK, THIS MUST HAVE BEEN—

Well, I think this was certainly a high point for Kennedy. It was a very important achievement to him. In my three years, nearly three years I spent working in the White House, and having a fair amount of contact with the President, I think the subject of arms control and worrying about avoiding war was the subject uppermost in his mind, he was always conscious of it. He was always conscious of the consequences of even a the sm— the potential consequences of even a small use of force. And he was worried about them. He always told people to read Barbara Tuchman's book The Guns of August, about how World War II started. In fact, I remember a conversation and I believe I have this right, with Christian Herter whom he'd appointed, Kennedy'd appointed as the trade negotiator. And Herter was not in good health, and he was well along in age, and he'd done that for oh, eight or nine months, and then he came in to see the President and to say that he wanted to resign, that he just didn't feel strong enough to continue the job. And it was a very — I happened to be the staff member who walked him in the office and so on. And there was very amicable conversation. And he was very gracious in thanking Herter; Herter had provided him some liberal republican political cover for being a free trader, and he needed it, and so on. And he mentioned The Guns of August to Herter, whether he read it, and that kind of conversation. So I think he thought it was a very important achievement. He certainly thought he was going to do more. He, he knew that the general complete disarmament negotiations had been, you know, sort of propaganda. But he thought, OK, we've done something concrete; there's more to do that was concrete, and he was looking forward to it. Uh, now, it's hard for me to reflect on what it meant to Khrushchev since I'm not an expert and I have no access — had no access to Khrushchev. Even the little bit of access that American scholars who read Russian had. But just from his demeanor and his behavior, it certainly was a, an excited occasion for him. And it was an easy negotiation, which indicated that they wanted a treaty.

LET'S GO BACK TO WHAT I STARTED WITH, WHICH WAS-JUST TO FINISH UP HERE, BECAUSE I THINK YOU WERE A LITTLE MORE UH...(WE HAVE TWO MINUTES LEFT)...PASSIONATE. NO, I THINK WE'LL JUST TAKE IT. THE MISSILE CRISIS AND THE LEAD TO THE... WHAT DID THE MISSILE CRISIS DO TO KENNEDY, WHAT DID IT DO TO THE PUSH FOR AN ARMS AGREEMENT?

People ask, did the missile crisis lead to the test ban treaty. And I think the answer is yes. I think it— for Kennedy, to my observation, and Khrushchev more a matter of speculation made concrete things that they had known in some sense. They knew that nuclear weapons were horrifying. Kennedy knew and had many briefings and was very well aware of the flight time from...you know, an American missile site to the Soviet Union, the shorter flight time from a submarine. And those submarines then were had rather short-range missiles that would have been if they'd been fired, they would have been fired from, you know, 750 miles off the Soviet coast, not five thousand miles away and the middle of the mid-west. But the emotional experience is different from the intellectual knowledge, and I think the emotional experience was very strong. And the story which we talked about earlier, of Kosnotsov saying, "You'll never do this again." I think there was, so to speak, a parallel story, and mind you, this is a speculation in Kennedy's mind, "This oughtn't to happen again. We can't afford to be in this situation again." And I'm sure that Kennedy's second-term agenda was Let's do more. And in that sense the missile crisis was a step. On the other hand there always the matters detail the Russians wanted a treaty, we wanted a treaty, we got one.

On the whole the negotiation was an easy one. The Soviet wanted a treaty, we wanted a treaty.

CAN YOU WAIT TILL THIS...THE ELECTRONICS GET WARMED UP...ARE YOU READY? OKAY...

On the whole, the negotiations were easy. The Soviets wanted a treaty. We wanted a treaty. One of the sticky points was the language of the withdrawal clause. Under what circumstances we could withdraw from the treaty. We felt that it was indispensable to have a clause that said if somebody else started setting off nuclear explosions, i.e., the Chinese the treaty didn't bind us. The Soviets didn't want to mention the possibility of a third party setting off nuclear explosions. And there was a lot of back and forth about this. Finally there was some rather indirect oblique language, the language now in the treaty which the Soviets proposed. Thought rather than cabling and waiting a day for the answers, I would call up, which I did. I called the White House, I got Bundy. Bundy happened to be in the President's office. The President was talking to Macmillan about the same subject. I believe Macmillan had called him having got a cable from his Embassy, or maybe a phone call. In any event the President listened and Bundy listened, the President said go ahead. And we went ahead. That was really the only hard point. There was one other matter worth mentioning. When Gromyko started in the opening conversations, he talked about a non-aggression pact between the Soviet Union and its allies. The Warsaw Pact powers. And the NATO powers in Europe, of mutual renunciation of aggression. That was at the time, viewed as political poison for us, it would be going behind the backs of our NATO allies and so on. Uh... response to Gromyko was to say yes, we'll talk about that, let's talk about the treaty first. And after we talked about the treaty, we talked about putting in the press release, or the communique the desire, of discussing this, and that's all it ever was made of it. Looking back, it's at least conceivable that if we'd taken that up at the time, and started a wrangle about it we might have derailed things. But I don't know, that's a speculation too.

LET ME ASK YOU ONCE MORE IF YOU CAN, IF YOU CAN KEEP IT SHORT, THE MISSILE CRISIS AND ITS IMPACT ON THIS AND STUFF. MAYBE YOU SHOULD JUST START BY SAYING THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS...

Did the Cuban Missile Crisis lead to the Test Ban Treaty? I think the answer in some sense is yes. That the emotional experience of being at the brink is something different from the mere intellectual knowledge that missiles are dangerous and that nuclear warheads could kill millions of people if they exploded. And it was the emotional experience which both Kennedy and Khrushchev shared. That I think had an influence on the frame of mind, of each other.

WHEN YOU CAME BACK WHAT WAS THE MOOD IN THE COUNTRY, I KNOW KENNEDY WAS VERY CONCERNED THAT, AND YOU SAID EARLIER THAT THE, YOU KNOW, WE'VE GOT TO REMEMBER THE SORT OF ANTI-COMMI MOOD IN THOSE DAYS...

Well the President was uncertain about what the reception of that would be, of the treaty. But in a, testing it out, in a western tour he made the month after the treaty was initialed, he got very positive responses. And he found that talking peace was a popular thing. And I would say that in general there's some, we do have both contradictory moods at once. We are an economy, and we are worrying about peace. And I think those, that's a tension that always exists.

WHAT DO YOU THINK, I'M ASKING EVERYONE I SPEAK TO ABOUT THE SORT OF, THE LESSONS, OR THE LEGACY OF THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS. IN YOUR OWN EXPERIENCE AND THE TEST BAN BUSINESS. HOW WOULD YOU PHRASE THE LESSONS OF THE MISSILE?

Well...to me the lesson of the crisis is that there were so many occasions when it could've exploded, and that therefore, being in a situation in which things like that can happen, is a very uncomfortable situation to be in. I can't conceive that we can simply indefinitely go on in a state of hostile arm confrontation without an explosion. And there are a number of different things that have to be done about it, many. But but I can't conceive that it can go on that way. Now it's a long time. It's twenty-three years ago but if you look at Soviet relations with the United States, in the intervening period, they've been up and down. They've been better, and they're now worse. They hadn't been a steady state of hostility. And which I think is highly desirable

DO YOU THINK WE'VE LEARNED THE LESSON OF THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS TODAY?

Well I think there different lessons and different people have learned different lessons. There are people who've learned the lesson quote unquote "lesson" that nuclear superiority is what matters. I think that's a wrong lesson. I don't think it's what mattered then, and I know it's unattainable now in any real way, and therefore, I think it's a deeply wrong lesson. I've already said what I believe the right lesson is, and I think some people have and some people haven't learned it and part of the problem is that a great many people, and a good, and great many important people haven't learned.

CAN YOU SAY THAT AGAIN WITHOUT THE I'VE ALREADY SAID...

Yeah, yeah... there are right lessons and wrong lessons to learn from the Cuban Missile Crisis, the right lesson in my view, is that the reflection on the events shows you at how many points something could have gone terribly wrong. And from that you conclude that a continuous state of hostile, heavily armed confrontation is, unendurable. A wrong lesson, that other people have drawn, is that it was our overwhelming nuclear superiority which counted therefore we have once again to achieve it I don't believe that's possible. And I think no person who really understands the technology of the weapons, how they would be used if they were used can believe that overwhelming superiority can ever again be attained. But there are, many people including many politically important influential people who, believe that it should be and are trying to do so.

DOES THAT CONCERN YOU, THAT THE LESSON, THE MOST IMPORTANT LESSON IN YOUR MIND HAS BEEN FORGOTTEN PERHAPS, OR HAS NOT BEEN, HAS NOT, IN THE MIND OF THE POLITICAL LEADERS TODAY?

I certainly am concerned that the political leaders today, if they have learned that lesson, don't seem to be following it. My own view for instance, is that SDI is goes contrary to that lesson. The belief that this is a desirable in is a mistaken belief. And I think that because I think there's no way in which a hundred percent effective defense can be achieved. And that another round of technical competition, that both the defensive and offensive levels, is only going to make things worse not better.